{"id":11960,"date":"2019-08-28T10:33:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T17:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11960"},"modified":"2019-08-28T10:33:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T17:33:56","slug":"trump-or-what-exactly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-or-what-exactly\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump \u2014 or What, Exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president\u2019s that reasonable voters can debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Trump\u2019s case, two massive annual budget deficits \u2014 coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt \u2014 seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine,&nbsp;<em>in extremis<\/em>, that there remains any notion of \u201cstimulus\u201d or \u201cpump-priming\u201d left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not a word comes from Trump\u2019s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each \u2014 other than the Democrats\u2019 promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no&nbsp;<em>rational<\/em>&nbsp;alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump\u2019s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! \u2014 and Lord knows what next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/08\/comparison-trump-record-former-presidents-current-critics\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president\u2019s that reasonable voters can debate. In Trump\u2019s case, two massive annual budget deficits \u2014 coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt \u2014 seem fair game. No president for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-36U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8667,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-utterly-hypocritical-response-to-trumps-criticisms-of-his-record\/","url_meta":{"origin":11960,"position":0},"title":"Obama\u2019s Utterly Hypocritical Response to Trump\u2019s Criticisms of His Record","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO - The Corner President Obama just said this about Donald Trump\u2019s disparagement of the last seven years: \u201cIn the echo chamber that is presidential politics, everything is dark and everything is terrible.\u201d Presidential candidates \u201cdon\u2019t seem to offer many solutions for the disasters that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NRO The Corner&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NRO The Corner","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/nro-the-corner\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Obama-Budget-Plan-jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Obama-Budget-Plan-jpg-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12398,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-the-spreading-debt-virus-5-potential-cures-for-30-trillion-problem\/","url_meta":{"origin":11960,"position":1},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: The spreading debt virus \u2014 5 potential cures for $30 trillion problem","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 29, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News The current\u00a0U.S. budget deficit\u00a0could soon exceed a record $4 trillion. The massive borrowing is being driven both by prior budget profligacy and a hurried effort by the\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0administration to pump liquidity into a quarantined America. The shutdown has left the country on the cusp\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1175,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/deficits-and-depression\/","url_meta":{"origin":11960,"position":2},"title":"Deficits and Depression","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We will learn in November just how angry the public is about a lot of things, from higher taxes to massive unemployment. But the popular uproar pales in comparison to the sense of humiliation that we Americans are quite broke. In 2008, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;October 2010&quot;","block_context":{"text":"October 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/october-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2488,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-the-president-in-recovery\/","url_meta":{"origin":11960,"position":3},"title":"Is the President in Recovery?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama does not care much about deficits \u2014 other than worrying that big debt might matter in his re-election campaign. In his first three budgets, Obama borrowed nearly $5 trillion. Currently, the government is borrowing about 45 percent of everything that it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Debt and Deficits&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2590,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-psychology-of-debt-obamas-rendezvous-with-political-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":11960,"position":4},"title":"The Psychology of Debt: Obama&#8217;s Rendezvous with Political Reality","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Debt Matters Over the last two decades it became an article of popular faith that budget deficits did not matter that much. Conservatives began to talk of annual red-ink in vague terms of percentages of the gross domestic product rather than in real billions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;July 2009&quot;","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9047,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/in-search-of-fixes-for-a-fossilized-economy\/","url_meta":{"origin":11960,"position":5},"title":"In Search of Fixes for a Fossilized Economy","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015. While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11962,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11960\/revisions\/11962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}